


necromantia

by shcherbatskayas



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: AU, Bad coping mechanisms, Dysfunctional Friendships, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Off-screen Character Death, Tsumugi's Canon Self-Image Issues, identity theft, maybe there'll be a sequel to this someday? who knows, shcherbatskayas content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-18
Updated: 2018-07-18
Packaged: 2019-06-12 12:10:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15339606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shcherbatskayas/pseuds/shcherbatskayas
Summary: Junko has been dead for six months.Tsumugi brings her back in her own way.





	necromantia

**Author's Note:**

> beep boop it's i love tsumugi shirogane o clock. i've had this idea for a long time and i finally fucking wrote it. yay. also god, someone needs to get tsumugi a therapist. it isn't gonna be though. not yet. anyways, i hope you enjoy, and like always, kudos and comments are super appreciated <33333

The box of blonde hair dye sits inconspicuously on the bathroom sink, and Tsumugi studies it with the care of a scientist looking through a microscope. It’s the last thing she needs, the last part of her plan before she leaves. It’s all that’s left. 

Tsumugi breathes in. She’s doing this. She’s really going to do this. This is happening. She opens the box carefully and looks at the bottle inside. Yes, that’s Junko’s shade. That’s exactly it. That’s exactly what she was looking for. 

First, she has to brush her hair. It’s longer than Junko’s was, but when she styles it into waves like Junko did, the length is perfect. Part of the reason she had to wait six months instead of three to enact her plan was because her hair had to be the right length for her to conceivably be Juko. Sure, Tsumugi could’ve gotten a wig or extensions, but it would be better to do it naturally. To, on her own, be as Junko as she could. It would make things easier. 

Junko would find it funny, probably, that she’s doing this. Tsumugi starts applying the dye to her hair and tries to think of what Junko would think beyond the grave. Tsumugi is pretty good at thinking like Junko these days. She has the diaries memorized and the way she spoke in them down pat, and so it’s not hard to mold her thoughts along those lines. 

_If I was Junko, and my best friend of four years stole my identity six months after my death to make me live on, I would…_

_Laugh._

Tsumugi knows that Junko would think she was being pathetic. Junko usually thought that she was being pathetic, but that was what made their friendship so good. Junko made her less pathetic. Junko made her a better person. Junko made everyone better with her crass manners and secret caring and grand plans. And sure, Tsumugi had to pay to be a part of all of it, but it was worth it. It was so, so worth it. She never regretted it because no one else would have ever taken Tsumugi on. No one would have molded her into someone useful, someone with enough skill to fake a whole identity. No one else had ever loved her, and no one else ever could. Not unless she took on Junko’s name and face and soul. 

Maybe when Junko was done laughing, she would be proud of her. Tsumugi hopes so. 

It’s so easy to drown in Junko, Tsumugi realizes when she’s done applying the dye. It’s so easy to take on that skin as hers, toss her old one away. Tsumugi Shirogane, the awkward thirteen-year-old from Yazuwa, no longer exists. Junko Enoshima, the future model from Tokyo, is born again. 

She has to wait an hour before washing it out, so Tsumugi sits on the floor of the bathroom and checks her phone. She updates Junko’s (her) Instagram with a picture of a dinner Tsumugi made for the sheer purpose of taking a picture of it, captions it with something about being on the grind, and then scrolls through it mindlessly. What posts would Junko like? What would she comment on them? Tsumugi looked through her whole history and thinks she can do a decent impersonation. She just has to do it. 

She comments on three selfies, tells the girls that they are icons and queens and adds heart emojis—never red, always pink with sparkles—likes a few posts about what’s going on in the fashion world and some bands that she used to follow, and then Tsumugi paints her nails—never pink with sparkles, always red. It’s a complicated process with many rules, but Tsumugi’s been doing this in chunks for six months. She knows them now. 

Just like she predicted, Tsumugi hears the sound of her stepbrother coming home. She hears him go to his room. Tetsuo is a nusace, a life-ruiner, and she’s more than happy that she’ll never have to see him again. He will be gone, gone, gone from her, just like she always dreamed. It’s a relief, but she worries. She worries if maybe he’ll find her, or if he’ll prey on someone new, but then she remembers that Junko wouldn’t care and so Tsumugi won’t care, either. She’ll just make herself not care. 

(Junko joked about what Tsumugi told her about him in her diary. Joked about what he did to her. Tsumugi tries very hard and she can make herself not care about it, but she can’t quite convince herself that it’s funny.)

The time to wash out the dye arrives. Tsumugi is careful about it, and when she’s done, she smiles. She really does look like Junko. She takes off her glasses, pops in contacts, does her makeup to make herself truly, truly look like Junko (heavier contour for sharper cheekbones, eyeliner around the edges to make her eyes look bigger, not applying lipstick to her whole lip to make them look smaller), and then she curls her hair into big Junko waves. 

Pigtails. She just has to put in the pigtails, and she’s done. 

Tsumugi parts her hair with shaking hands. She’s doing this, she’s doing this, she’s leaving herself behind, she’s really, really doing it. She is becoming Junko. 

Pigtails in. 

She is Junko. 

***

Tsumugi goes through the woods and walks to the train station two towns over, where no one knows Junko and so thus no one will know her. She waits on a bench at the station, and men stop to look at her. Tsumugi doesn’t look back at them, but that’s a good indicator that her disguise—no, her new self—is working. Junko always got looked at. Tsumugi disappeared behind her. 

The limo that Junko would’ve ordered pulls up. A man in a suit gets out and approaches her. He stops and takes her in, her stylish clothes and her perfect pigtails, the bored way she looks at her phone. She hopefully looks like money. Tsumugi is pretending not to look at him. 

“Enoshima-san?” He says cautiously, and Tsumugi looks up. 

“Yeah?” She says, lowering her voice in the way she practiced to sound just like Junko.

“Your car is here.”

“Finally!” Tsumugi gets up from the bench, dusts herself off, and approaches the limo. When the man opens the door for her, Tsumugi wants to say thank you. Junko does not. 

Just like she ordered, all of her bags (or, well, the bags she stole from Junko) are packed into the trunk. All of them are filled with Junko’s things. No, no, they’re her things. Hers. Tsumugi is Junko now. 

Tsumugi is the dead one. It’s Junko who lives on. 

***

Park Hotel rises into the sky like it intends to make a dent in it, and Tsumugi looks at it with an impassive, unimpressed expression, a Junko expression. Hotel employees rush to her limo like moths to a flame and start carrying her bags as Tsumugi sashies to the front desk. She isn’t carrying a single thing. 

“I’m checking in.” Tsumugi announces in Junko’s voice, resting her nails on the desk. They are perfectly painted with no chips in them. The nails of someone who is used to not carrying things. 

The woman at the front desk looks at her like she’s trash. Too young to rent a hotel room, she thinks, especially in this hotel. Definitely not too young to live in one, though, not when the room is technically shared with the man she decided would be her manager. He’ll never set a foot in it, of course, and he doesn’t know he’s going to be Junko’s manager yet, but he’ll figure it out. Tsumugi will make him figure it out. 

“Name, please.” She says. Her glance is a challenge. Tsumugi smiles, and the woman loses. 

“Enoshima Junko.”

When she confirms it on the computer and gives her the key, the woman is looking at her with appropriate reverence and fear. 

No one ever looks at her like she’s trash again.


End file.
